>I mean, I wouldn't choose my mechanic based on how comforting they could be. I grew up in an auto-shop in the SF Bay, my family still owns one of them. You ma

>I mean, I wouldn't choose my mechanic based on how comforting they could be. I grew up in an auto-shop in the SF Bay, my family still owns one of them. You may not choose a mechanic based on their empathy, but the large majority (~90%) of people do. Trust is a thing that is hard to establish, but incredibly easy to break. One bad part, one snippy phone call, will totally ruin the relationship that you've built up over decades with a customer and their family. They'll never walk in the door again. We've experimented with all forms of customer communication. From texts, to online booking, to Groupon and Yelp. Nothing works anywhere near as good as an inperson chat. When you've got to deliver the message that their car needs a $3k new transmission, despite the family road-trip in a week's time, it's best to do it face to face. Most of the time, that's not realistic, so a phone call is the next best thing. When the estimate is high like that, then it usually takes over 10 minutes per call. There's a lot of yelling and crying, usually. People get very attached to their cars. Hell, they'll abandon their house and home before they abandon their cars[0]. When you do extensive surgery on the car they drove their new wife home in, that they drove their first-born in, that they cried in when their Mom died, that they spilled innumerable sodas in, well, you can understand why they throw money into the repairs even when it makes no sense. Providing that 'deft hand', those years of knowledge and experience, has helped the business not just survive the Dot-Com and Housing crashes, but has let us thrive despite those economic catastrophes. Knowing how to tell someone that the car is no longer worth the repair does take some experience and care. Customers have come to trust us in helping them make decisions they have a hard time with. The majority of what trust is made of, what it can be partitioned out into, is empathy. [0] one reason I'm not bullish on self driving car services that are all rentals and leases.